The demand for better and cheaper wireless communication services and equipment continues to grow at a rapid pace. Much of this growth is spurred by the Federal Communication Commission's (“FCC”) approval of certain frequency bands for the next generation of Personal Communication Service (“PCS”) devices that provide advanced voice and/or data messaging services, as well as voice telephone services. A relatively small portion of the available frequency bands was set aside for narrowband PCS (“NPCS”) to encourage efficient use of the available spectrum.
To maximum use of the NPCS spectrum, wireless service providers are making new services available to subscribers beyond traditional paging services. These advanced wireless messaging services include two-way paging, voice messages, telemetry applications, e-mail applications, news information, and other end-user applications that are typically regarded as desktop personal computer (PC) applications or cellular telephone applications. These advanced wireless messaging services are instead performed via a subscriber communication unit owned by the end-user, such as a two-way paging device or a telemetry device. These advanced wireless messaging services attract more subscribers and increase use by existing subscribers.
Unfortunately, these advanced wireless messaging services generally are single-user oriented applications. There is a lack of advanced wireless messaging services and devices that enable cooperation among two or more end users (or subscribers) for the purposes of, for example, executing a common application or sharing data entered or modified by one end user.
There is therefore a need in the art for new end-user applications for use in advanced wireless messaging systems. In particular, there is a need for advanced wireless messaging systems and/or end-user applications capable of allowing cooperative communication across an NPCS wireless messaging network between two or more end users. More particularly, there is a need for advanced wireless messaging systems and/or end-user applications that allow a subscriber to enter commands or to modify data in a subscriber communication unit and then transmit the commands or modified data via the wireless messaging network to one or more other end-user devices that then may respond via the wireless messaging network.